Barth's Doctrine Research Articles

‘God corresponds to Godself’: John Webster's doctrine of God ‘after’ Karl Barth

AbstractThe nature and extent of Karl Barth's significance in John Webster's theological formation is widely recognised but remains to be explored in detail. Addressing this lacuna, this essay considers how Barth's doctrine of the triune God animates Webster's teaching on the same. In approaching the topic, I show how Webster carries forward Barth's deep sense of God's aseity in relation to the world and follows Barth in his commitment to the singularity of God's triune being. God's particularity and aseity converge in ‘God's self-correspondence’ (namely, that God ‘in Godself’ corresponds to God ‘for us’), which represents the core of Barth's influence on Webster's theology proper. The final section responds to Katherine Sonderegger's recent criticism of Webster's ‘relationalism’, which counts God's relation to creatures as an integral aspect of God's eternal life. I reframe the issue in terms of Webster's late-career retractions of the language of inclusion and divine self-determination, arguing that the difficulties that Sonderegger identifies in earlier writings are overcome in the final decade of Webster's corpus.

Karl Barth: A Catholic Appraisal

At least two of Barth's main claims are incompatible with basic commitments of Catholic theology, though in neither case does seeing the problem in Barth depend on accepting uniquely Catholic beliefs. If carried through consistently (which Barth does not do) his claim that God has his being in his act of revelation proves incompatible with the insistence of Nicene trinitarianism that three distinct persons are one God, and that one divine person contingently became flesh as a free gift for our salvation. In soteriology, Barth's doctrine of election proves incompatible with the belief that we are participants in our own salvation, and not merely spectators of it.

Karl Barth and Catholic Theology: Does Barth Undo the Deep Grammar of Nicene Faith?

This article explores Bruce Marshall's objections to Barth's doctrine of God and his view of salvation. Whereas Marshall's key objection to Barth's doctrine of God centers on his view that “Barth equates who God is with what God does” and that this assertion, when carried out consistently, “undoes the deep grammar of the Nicene faith—the Catholic faith,” I demonstrate that Marshall has misread Barth by assuming that he has collapsed the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity. Marshall thinks that for Barth, “God simply has no being other than his being for us.” I explain that Barth always made a key distinction between the eternal self-sufficient being and act of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and his free and loving actions toward us in the economy.

Karl Barth and the Purification of Divine Simplicity

AbstractJohnson investigates Karl Barth's critical appropriation of the doctrine of divine simplicity. While Barth is critical of traditional formulations of the doctrine, he understands himself to be refining the doctrine rather than rejecting it. Barth notes that Scripture attributes a diverse set of perfections to God in describing his salvific actions. These diverse perfections, however, have a fundamental unity: God does not contradict himself, but rather his perfections describe his unified, trustworthy agency. For this reason, we can know that in God's inmost being, God is not self‐contradictory but utterly unified or simple in his self‐fidelity. Johnson points out that a key element of Barth's doctrine of God is that it can never be the mere deduction of an abstract, transcendent entity; rather, it must begin with the transcendent God's relationship to creation, and therefore must begin with Jesus Christ, who reveals the true being of God. Johnson identifies three guidelines for speaking of Barth's doctrine: each one of God's perfections must be seen as perfections of his one divine being; God's one being does not exist above and behind his revealed perfections; and God's revealed perfections are essential to his divine nature. On this basis, Johnson explores what Barth has to say about the relationship between God's freedom and his self‐fidelity, including as this regards his freedom to live his one eternal life for us.

THE ROOT OF UNION WITH CHRIST: COMPARISON OF ELECTION IN JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH

As two of the arguably greatest theologians in church history, both John Calvin and Karl Barth have recognized the significant role of union with Christ and presented it in their works respectively. However, there is no study devoted specifically on the comparison of the two theologians' thoughts regarding this critical theme. This article will start from exploring Calvin and Barth's doctrine of election, the root of their theology of union with Christ. Karl Barth frankly admits that he has departed from Calvin radically on the doctrine of election. While vindicating Barth's assertion, this article further argues that Calvin and Barth's divergent understandings on the root of union with Christ are driven by their contrasting ontological presuppositions. The clarification of that rooted difference will pave the way for our future study of Calvin and Barth's distinctive characterizing of union with Christ.

Book Review: Karl Barth's Theology as a Resource for a Christian Theology of Religions

Karl Barth's Theology as a Resource for a Christian Theology of Religions. By Sven Ensminger. London: Bloomsbury TT $29.95 (paper).Scholars working in the theology of religions field often pigeonhole Karl Barth as an exclusivist, because of his insistence on Jesus Christ as the norm and source of revelation and salvation. As Sven Ensminger notes, the pluralist John Hick, who conceives the various world religions as spokes pointing toward one transcendent reality, dismisses Barths corpus as a sublime bigotry inimical to interreligious dialogue and a global ethic (p. 60). Less tendentiously, perhaps, Gavin D'Costa reads Barth as inconsistently combining elements of exclusivism, pluralism, and inclusivism (the view that non-Christians might come to a saving faith in Jesus outside of an explicit faith commitment).Ensminger deconstructs such stereotypes through a careful and close reading of Barth's work. The Swiss Protestant theologian, he notes, never developed a complete theology of religions, despite a stated desire to do so one day. Consequently, interpreters have had to sift through seemingly isolated passages in Barths oeuvre to interpret his approach to non-Christian faiths. A trenchant critique of religion as a source of idolatry (in Church Dogmatics 1/2, par. 17), receives much attention-so much so, in fact, that Barth has sometimes been read as advocating a religionless Christianity similar to the proposal in Bonhoeffer s prison letters. Ensminger, however, drawing upon recent scholarship on this passage, reads it primarily as an intraecclesial critique of a Christian hubris that would cling to revelation as a birthright, rather than as a gift fostering charity toward religious outsiders. Also frequent grist for the mill is a passage from the later Barth (CD TV/3, par. 69) that discerns parables of die kingdom in secular culture-lesser lights outside the church that reflect Christ, the one true light.The key problem, as Ensminger ably demonstrates, is that interpreters have read Barth too narrowly and too selectively, focusing on diese two passages, along with Barths occasional comments on other religious traditions-for example, a fascinating excursus on the role of grace in Amida Buddhism. If one would engage Barth's interpretations of religion, one must read his work as a whole. To that end, Ensminger offers four chapters that deal, respectively, with Barth's doctrine of Christ die one revealer, the foundation for all that follows; his interpretation of the role of religion as the human face ingredient to die reception of revelation; his tiieological anthropology diat stresses the solidarity of all people in sin and grace; and his revisionist account of election as embracing all people, whether they realize it yet or not. …

The heavenly witness to God: Karl Barth's doctrine of angels

AbstractKarl Barth's doctrine of angels has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention. This article begins the work of addressing that omission. In particular, it argues that Barth's unique construal of the angelic being and purpose compels him to propose that the angels have a mediatorial function in the service of God's revelation. While being both necessary to and consistent with Barth's description of the angels’ ontology, this service of mediation contradicts his earlier doctrine of revelation and is superfluous to it.

Reason After Revelation: Karl Barth on Divine Word and Human Words

AbstractThough little understood, Karl Barth's moral theology is widely criticized. Indeed, it is so widely criticized because it is so little understood. Among ethicists, the principal objects of criticism are Barth's account of practical reason and the account of revelation on which it depends. This essay argues that such criticisms miss their mark, because they rest on an incomplete understanding of Barth's doctrine of the Word of God that results in an incorrect understanding of his doctrine of divine command. Because critics neglect his account of subjective reception of revelation through which divine command is heard, they ignore the account of disputation, deliberation, and decision present in his account of scriptural interpretation and ecclesial confession. By laying out the discursive practices of scriptural interpretation and ecclesial confession, and by drawing out the deliberative dimensions of Kantian self‐legislation and Hegelian mutual recognition at work in interpretation and confession alike, this essay argues that these practices provide a fuller account of what Barth calls “practical casuistry,” as well as his most fulsome and winsome account of practical reason.

Karl Barth's Doctrine of Creation: Church‐bells beyond the stars

AbstractDespite its apparent distance from our contemporary context, Barth's theology can be read as offering a distinctively Christian account of the world as God's good creation, while maintaining its distance from more philosophical and experiential approaches. Barth's iteration of the traditional doctrine reveals significant scriptural, personalist and christological features while insisting upon more than a mere account of origination. Though defending key features of his account, this article also suggests that at times his work displays an ingrained anthropocentrism, a pneumatological deficit and a systematic urge that threatens to constrict the theology of creation.

Barth's Doctrine of Creation: Creation, Nature, Jesus, and the Trinity. By Andrew K. Gabriel. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014. 118 pages. $16.00 (paper).

Barth's Doctrine of Creation: Creation, Nature, Jesus, and the Trinity. By Andrew K. Gabriel. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014. 118 pages. $16.00 (paper).

Człowieczeństwo Boga w chrystologicznej interpretacji Karla Bartha

The article shows the key aspects of the Christological approach to Karl Barth's teaching about “the humanity of God”. The author argues that in the mirror of Jesus Christ's humanity the humanity of God included in Jesus's divine nature is revealed. It is in Jesus Christ that kenosis and gloria, humanum and divinum meet in an amazing way; and in the negotiating space which is constituted by His Person they explain each other, speaking more sonorously with their own voice. Hence the point of departure for a reflection on the problem that is posed here, is looking closely at the formal basis of Barth's theology. Jesus Christ's central place – with respect to the contents, form and method – is considered to be one of its most important attributes. The author of Die Kirchliche Dogmatik starts his argument by discussing Jesus Christ's pre-existence with the help of the doctrine of “the gracious election” that is a modified conception of his earlier Trinitarian theology. It says that God “from the beginning” is directed to man, suggesting a pro-human character of God's being and acting. In the light of Barth's doctrine Jesus Christ, as the second Person of the Trinity, is not only the object of election”, but He is also the electing subject. As the One Who Wants to complete the Father's salutary work, he is the justification and guarantee of our salvation. Barth categorically pronounces himself in favor of the Christological paradigm of the Revelation saying that around history and the dialogue, in which God and a man meet and are together – around a mutually made and kept relation – there is the most complete opening and exchange. It happens in the Person, since Jesus Christ is in the only and in the highest degree: a true God's man (Gott des Menschen) and a true Divine Man (Mensch Gottes). The phrase about the “humanity of God” – is Emmanuel, to whom we pass from the Christological centre, taking into consideration the theological and anthropological consequences following this movement.

Jesus Christ, election and nature: revising Barth during the ecological crisis

AbstractTheologians seeking to respond to the ecological crisis seldom turn to the theology of Karl Barth as a resource. In fact, some suggest that his doctrine of God is too monarchical and leads to unnecessary hierarchies between God and humans, or between humans and the rest of nature. This article counters this trend and begins a dialogue with Barth, especially on the place of non-human nature in his thought. While agreeing with the substance of Barth's theology, it is argued a number of critical additions and revisions are appropriate, especially concerning his doctrine of election. The article first briefly outlines Barth's doctrine of election and then, second, examines various New Testament passages on election and non-human nature. This second section will examine the prologue of John's Gospel, Colossians 1:15–20 and Romans 8:18–23. As key texts in Barth's exposition, it will be noted how he passes over important connections between election and nature found in them. Guided by the green exegesis of Richard Bauckham, it will be argued that nature is not merely the stage for the drama between God and humanity but that it is also an object of God's election and thereby participates in reconciliation and redemption. The third part of the article suggests various points of commensurability, correction and addition to Barth's theology arising from the biblical material examined. This includes points concerning theological epistemology, the atonement, anthropology and the theology of nature. For example, Romans 8 suggests that creation groans in anticipation of redemption. Barth's view of the cross, especially the Son's taking up of human suffering, is extended to suggest that the cross is God's way of identifying with the suffering of nature and its anticipation of redemption, and not just human sin and salvation. The most important revision, however, is to be made to Barth's doctrine of election. It may be summarised as follows: in Jesus Christ, God elects the Christian community and individuals for salvation within the community of creation. The article concludes by suggesting areas of dialogue with other types of ecotheology, especially ecofeminist forms.

Revisiting Karl Barth's doctrine of baptism from a perspective on prayer

AbstractThis article focuses on Karl Barth's mature doctrine of baptism, as it is developed in the final part-volume of theChurch Dogmatics. Published in 1967 (English translation in 1969) as a fragment of the ethics of the doctrine of reconciliation, Barth's theology of baptism is not without its controversy. Among the critiques that the baptism fragment has generated, one of the most significant concerns is over its presentation of the relation between divine agency and human agency. The formal division in the baptism fragment (and its sharp distinction between ‘Spirit baptism’ and ‘water baptism’) is taken to imply an uncharacteristic separation of divine agency and human agency, which renders his doctrine of baptism inconsistent with other areas of his thought. The argument proposed in this article, however, is that better clarity as to what Barth is theologically up to in the baptism fragment can be gained by reading his mature theology of baptism in connection with his theology of prayer. Barth's theology of prayer is rich and extensive. Although very present across all of his writings, his thinking on prayer (and indeed theChurch Dogmaticsitself) culminates in an intriguing set of meditations on the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Although unfinished, these lectures on prayer were published posthumously asThe Christian Lifein 1976 (English translation 1981). Together with his doctrine of baptism and his unwritten doctrine of the Lord's Supper, the finished lectures on prayer would have formed the ethics of reconciliation. Importantly, Barth insists that baptism and the Lord's Supper were to be understood not only in the context of prayer but actually as prayer, as ‘invocation’. Rooted in the motif of ‘correspondence’, which is deployed at a number of key points throughout theChurch Dogmatics, Barth's theology of invocation is based on a highly participative account of the divine–human relation: divine agency and human agency ‘correspond’ in the crucible of prayer. From the perspective provided by his writings on prayer, invocation and the motif of the ‘correspondence’ of divine and human agency, this article revisits the critique that Barth unduly separates divine and human agency in the baptism fragment.

‘Offenbarung, Philosophie, und Theologie’: Karl Barth and Georges Florovsky in dialogue

AbstractKarl Barth and Georges Florovsky interacted in several contexts, beginning in 1931 and then later within the ecumenical movement. Although some have noted a ‘Barthian’ accent in Florovsky's Christocentric theology, in fact both theologians remained critical of the other. Making use of extensive historical sources, this article attempts to reconstruct the meeting between Barth and Florovsky, and to pinpoint the areas of fundamental reservation and disagreement between the two. As will be shown, at the heart of their disagreement lay the role of eschatology in its impact on ecclesiology, a difference finally Christological in foundation. This fundamental disagreement shows itself likewise in relation to the two theologians' ideas concerning history, the relationship of philosophy to theology and the place of Hellenism in Church tradition. The role of Florovsky's opposition to the sophiology of Bulgakov in his interpretation of Barth, and Florovsky's stance vis-à-vis the debate between Barth and Brunner on natural theology, will also be considered. Uniquely, Florovsky anticipated the contemporary debate concerning Barth's doctrine of election, and drew crucial connections between Barth and Bulgakov on this point – an issue which for him was related to the question of the role of German Idealism in modern theology. Notwithstanding these disagreements, this article concludes by highlighting crucial areas of convergence between Barth and Florovsky concerning Christocentrism, revelation and theology as an enterprise in fides quaerens intellectum. Florovsky's ideas on analogy, naming and realism in theology will also be illumined, in relation to Barth and with reference to Bulgakov and Torrance.

Book Review: Incarnational Realism: Trinity and the Spirit in Augustine and Barth

Incarnational Realism: Trinity and Spirit in Augustine and Barth. By Travis E. Abies. TT $39.95 (paper).Travis E. Abies s Incamational Realism: Trinity and Spirit in Augustine and Barth takes as its point of departure late twentieth-century claim that Latin Christianity lacks a robust pneumatology, and this dismal state of affairs is due to Augustine's problematic Trinitarian theology. Abies, however, rejects this reading of Augustine and Latin Christianity and argues convincingly that Augustine is not guilty of alleged Geistvergessenheit. However, this is not merely a book championing Augustine's teachings; rather, as book's title indicates, Karl Barth's doctrine of Spirit, contrary to charges that his overemphasized Christology eclipses pneumatology, likewise has a role to play. In other words, Abies argues that both Barth and Augustine provide us with theologically rich teachings on Holy Spirit that, when read together and properly synthesized, offer important correctives to contemporary Trinitarian theology.In particular, Abies focuses on shortcomings of Trinitarian personalism and Trinitarian idealism. Abies worries that both contemporary expressions of Trinitarian teaching are too reductionistic and thus ultimately fail to maintain the integrity of reconciling act in economy of (p. 180). On one hand, Ables's concern regarding Trinitarian personalism is that it diminishes essential character of act in history, rendering it as an accidental occasion or concrete illustration of what is essentially a purely metaphorical relationship between human and divine community (p. 180). In other words, metaphorical relationship becomes so primary that it downgrades revelatory significance of Triune work in salvation to Jesus' exemplary relational existence as Son to Father (p. 180). On other hand, Trinitarian idealism is overly smitten with Hegel's Geist. Here God's self-revelation in economy is only possible as a result of necessity of self-alienating otherness internal to GodselP' (p. 181). In this narrative, God is not depicted as pouring out his love in but rather as incorporating history into Godself in what sometimes begins to look like a startlingly narcissistic picture of self-reflexivity (p. …

Definitive, Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth's Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4

AbstractKarl Barth's doctrine of baptism articulated in Church Dogmatics IV/4 is due for reassessment. Interpretation of this part of Barth's intellectual legacy has been conceptually determined by unresolved tensions within the Reformed tradition's sacramentology and by a widespread notion that Barth shifted from one side of this tension to the other over the course of his career. This article contests that notion and argues that Barth's doctrine of baptism is more sophisticated than often thought. By developing the concept of ‘paradoxical identity’ as a way to describe how Barth thinks about the relation between divine and human action, this article sheds new light on the value of Barth's work in Church Dogmatics IV/4.

Barth and the divine perfections

AbstractColin Gunton advanced the radical claim that Christians have univocal knowledge of God. Just this, he said in Act and Being, was the fruit of Christ's ministry and passion. Now, was Gunton right to find this teaching in Karl Barth – or at least, as an implication of Barth's celebrated rejection of ‘hellenist metaphysics’? This article aims to answer this question by examining Gunton's own claim in Act and Being, followed by a closer inspection of Barth's analysis of the doctrine of analogy in a long excursus in Church Dogmatics II/1.Contrary to some readings of Barth, I find Barth to be remarkably well-informed about the sophisticated terms of contemporary Roman Catholic debate about analogy, including the work of G. Sohngen and E. Pryzwara. Barth's central objection to the doctrine of analogy in this section appears to be the doctrine's reckless division (in Barth's eyes) of the Being of God into a ‘bare’ God, the subject of natural knowledge, and the God of the Gospel, known in Jesus Christ. But such reckless abstraction cannot be laid at the feet of Roman theologians alone! Barth extensively examines, and finds wanting, J. A. Quenstedt's doctrine of analogy, and the knowledge of God it affords, all stripped, Barth charges, of the justifying grace of Jesus Christ. From these pieces, Barth builds his own ‘doctrine of similarity’, a complex and near-baroque account, which seeks to ground knowledge of God in the living act of his revelation and redemption of sinners. All this makes one tempted to say that Gunton must be wrong in his assessment either of univocal predication or of its roots in the theology of Karl Barth.But passages from the same volume of the Church Dogmatics make one second-guess that first conclusion. When Barth turns from his methodological sections in volume II/1 to the material depiction of the divine perfections, he appears to lay aside every hesitation and speak as directly, as plainly and, it seems, as ‘univocally’ as Gunton could ever desire. Some examples from the perfection of divine righteousness point to Barth's startling use of frank and direct human terms for God's own reality and his unembarrassed use of such terms to set out the very ‘heart of God’.Yet things are never quite what they seem in Barth. A brief comparison between Gunton's univocal predication and Barth's own use of christological predication reveals some fault-lines between the two, and an explanation, based on Barth's own doctrine of justification, is offered in its place.

Barth and Darwin: What is Humanity?

Karl Barth proposed that secular texts including scientific theories could be understood as parables of aspects of the revealed truth not as such available to natural science. I explore that suggestion, seeking to understand what human biology in succession to the work of Charles Darwin has to contribute alongside Barth's doctrine of the human person.

Book Review: Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life

Approaching End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, Life. By Stanley Hauerwas. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2013. xvii + 251 pp. $24.00 (paper).Reflecting on Barth's doctrine of creation, Stanley Hauerwas suggests know there was a beginning because we have seen (p. 12). Something similar might be said of this book, situated toward end of Hauerwas's near half-century in academe. Yet, this collection is anything but a swan song (p. xiv), let alone an attempt to close canon, ossify old arguments, or clinch unresolved debates. On contrary, indefatigable Hauerwas here seems bent on keeping colloquy ever open unsettled. Those unfamiliar Hauerwasian oeuvre encounter a denouement that piques interest in precursoiy conversations, while those who have pored over every keystroke be reacquainted quintessential Hauerwas that keeps them coming back for more.The book's thirteen interweaving essays explore end inaugurated realized in Christ. John Howard Yoder Karl Barth are consistently (perhaps now predictably) remedy for much that ills. Barth's eschatological (hence christological) rendering of creation offers a corrective to Jean Porter's natural law ethic (chap. 1, The End is in Beginning). Yoders of the Lamb's lordship (p. 25) complements (completes?) J. Louis Martyn Douglas Harink on church qua apocalypse (chap. 2, The End of Sacrifice), setting up a subsequent reflection on sacrifice state (chap. 7, War Peace). Barth's assertion that is God helps us to see why and in politics is a theological misstep, though faith in humanity of God means no account of church is possible which does not require material that is rightly understood as politics (p. 85, chap. 4, Church Matters). Barth's rumination on health, a will to live in response to God's command, offers what an Aristotle problematized by Jonathan Lear cannot (pp. 211-212).Longtime engagements Aquinas are renewed in chapters on God's self-revelation (chap. 3, Witness, written Charles Pinches) bodily character of virtues (chap. 9, Habit Matters). Rounding out book are reflections on faithfulness amidst hubristic Baconian projects, especially technological imperative of medicine as secular salvation (p. 180). Hauerwas revisits Presence, asserting storied body (p. 177) over against what Jeffrey Bishop has termed anticipatory corpse (chap. 10, Suffering Presence). With Joel Shuman, Hauerwas belies bioethical musings on cloning by looking at Paul on baptism (chap. 11, Cloning Human Body). Jean Vanier Sam Wells commend with (p. 234) as Eleonore Stump reminds us why non-propositional knowledge matters (chap. 13, Disability). These are familiar themes for any acquainted Hauerwas. Yet what we find here is less repetition, more recapitulation-at once a summing up a carrying forward.The lifelong Methodist is notably keen on Anglicanism in this volume. After a chapter on The End of Protestantism (chap. 5), Hauerwas looks to Anglicanism as an epitome of Yoder's ecumenical vision an ecclesial expression of Alasdair MacIntyres tradition-constituted rationality (p. 114, chap. 6, Which Church? What Unity?). Trading heavily on Bruce Kaye's construal of Anglican ecclesiology (marked by Gallicanism, Catholicity without Leviathan, a of love), Hauerwas holds up Anglican catholicity as a way of being together amidst the challenge of Christian unity (p. …

‘An Extraordinarily Acute Embarrassment’: The Doctrine of Angels in Barth's Göttingen Dogmatics

AbstractStudy of Barth's doctrine of angels has languished, and the time is ripe for a thorough reassessment. While any full account will centre on the magisterial theology of angels in theChurch Dogmatics, much can be gained from a close, contextually informed reading of the earlier treatment of angels in the Göttingen dogmatics lectures. These lectures are shaped by a twofold procedural commitment: Barth's presentation is ordered, on one hand, to a recognisably modern conception of the logical content of Christian preaching; and it conforms, on the other hand, to a doctrinal sequence recommended by the dogmatic textbooks of the classical Reformed tradition. A tension between these two aspects becomes visible in Barth's handling of the doctrine of angels – a tract of teaching by which he is visibly unsettled. Barth accordingly attends with particular care to two fundamental modern objections to the doctrine – namely that it involves a superfluous reduplication of anthropological themes and that it has no independent doctrinal standing. The first objection exploits the observation that the doctrine of angels traditionally stands in close proximity to the doctrine of the human creature; the second follows from the claim that Christian preaching, and the dogmatic theology which serves it, attends strictly to the relationship between God and humanity, realised and revealed in the gospel. Barth's attempts to respond to these criticisms, and so to draw out the necessity and the proper dogmatic status of the doctrine of angels, are traced in detail. Angels and demons, conceived as real spiritual forces, are ineluctable features of the situation within which human moral agency is exercised. And angels are ingredients in, though not central to, the scriptural depiction of the relationship between God and humanity. Barth's elaboration of the positive features of Protestant scholastic angelology is summarised, and the motivating impulses and constructive potential of his theology of angels are briefly noted: Barth's exposition may be read as a complex exercise in theological self-differentiation; a recommendation of a distinctive style of biblical reasoning; and a creative contribution to the revitalisation of a culture of Christian witness.